Frontier posts declines in profit, revenues for Q4

Frontier Communications Corp. posted a decline in profit and revenues for the fourth quarter, adding to an overall decline in profit for the full year 2012.

The company Thursday reported a net income attributable to common shareholders of $24.9 million, or 2 cents a share, for the fourth quarter, compared with $42.2 million, or 7 cents a share, a year ago.

Excluding special items, totaling $33 million, or 4 cents a share, the company income was $57.9 million, or 6 cents share. The company saw severance costs during of the quarter of $17.2 million, integration costs of $13.5 million and losses on the early extinguishment of debt of $19.3 million.

Frontier’s operating expenses for the fourth quarter totaled $996.8 million, down from $1.1 billion a year ago, while its operating income increased from $230.5 million to $235.7 million.

The company said its decline in revenues mostly reflected a decline in the number of residential and business customers. Frontier said it lost some 50,400 customers during the fourth quarter.

Overall for the full year, Frontier posted a net income of $136.6 million, or 14 cents a share, down from $149.6 million, or 15 cents a share, in 2011. Revenues for the full year were $5 billion, compared with $5.2 billion a year ago.

Excluding charges the company’s earnings were 26 cents a share, up from 25 cents a year ago. That matched analysts’ expectations.

“During 2012, we successfully completed the integration of our July 2010 acquisition which tripled the size of the company,” said Chairman and CEO Maggie Wilderotter, in a statement. “We completed all of the system conversions, achieved cost savings of over $650 million, dramatically improved our network’s speed and capacity and have identified additional cost reductions of $140 million for achievement in 2013 related to continuing operational streamlining which will be partially offset by investments in growth initiatives.”

Frontier stock (NasdaqGS: FTR) was trading midday Friday at $4.10 up nearly 2 percent from Thursday’s close of $4.02.